You may remember him from way back in September when I enrolled in a Scottish Furniture class and changed the course of my career from living-in-a-box to (slightly) more lucrative auction work. He's a fantastic individual and is imbued with a steady, intense passion for his subject. I am glad to call him a friend, especially when he cooks me dinner and drives me places. Keeding.
He lives in a three-story townhouse on an out of the way street in Cupar called Kirk Wynd. "Kirk" is the old Scots word for church and a "wynd" (rhymes with kind) is a narrow medieval alleyway that snakes through houses. There are plenty of wynds in Cupar, including Lady Wynd, Robbers Wynd, and in St Andrews there is the rather unfortunate Butts Wynd. Ha.
As the name suggests there is a church on my road. In fact, it is right outside my bedroom window:
I live on the third floor of the house in a room with a box bed. It is a cozy attic space that David reclaimed and made into a separate little apartment. Here is a questionable photo of Avery in the box bed which I imagine she will hate me for posting, but I ain't scared:
I've wanted a bed with curtains my entire life and I must say that it is everything I dreamed it to be and more. I will never go back. The door with my clothes hanging from it on the left goes into the bathroom which has a skylight and a mammoth bookshelf filled with old dusty books about various and sundry subjects, including New Zealand Birds and other more questionable material. Next door is my second bedroom of dreams that has a double bed and a fireplace and this view towards the centre of town. Look! Kirks as far as the eye can see!
Here is my desk. Lots of really important work is done here; online poker, googling myself, and the usual music piracy:
The rest of the house is pretty sweet. The kitchen was a maelstrom of confusion at first owing to the ancient Rayburn, a type of fire-powered stove (with actual leaping flames) used in Scottish houses circa 1902. There is no microwave and that big box on the wall is a radio from the 40's. David eats lots of things grown locally and harvested by men with names like Angus and Doogie.
Hey look, it's the other side of the kitchen:
David likes everything out where he can see it. Can you dig it?My favorite part of the house is the back garden which contains 3 chickens, several fruit trees, flowers of the world, and about 4 metric tonnes of chicken poo. It's a nice place to drink tea and eavesdrop on the neighbors.
The big white chicken in the foreground is a tough piece of work. She flies at me when I open the back door to feed them. We have epic fights, me and that fat chicken. But I keep giving it food because to do otherwise would be cruel and unusual. Plus it would probably find a way to get inside the house and peck my eyes out in the box bed.
That bench and I are good friends. The thing in the back covered in ivy is the greenhouse, although I'm not sure what it's actually used for besides furniture storage. It's David Jones, after all.So that's my home in Cupar. It's kind of like living in a B&B, except you have to make your own breakfast, so I guess it's just a B. The sunsets are generally remarkable:
Changing gears: I'm moving to Edinburgh when I come back from North Carolina. I put down the deposit on my flat of dreams today. It's a fantastic place on Iona Street with high ceilings and hardwood floors (because nothing says classy like no carpets). I'll have plenty of room for people to come visit, so pile in! Here's what Iona Street looked like before there were cameras (foreground):
Needless to say it looks nothing like this now, although I'm pretty certain I'll still be walking everywhere just like those people did in olden times so I can't feel too advanced. On a related note: it's 2007, where is my flying car?
